1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to a system and method for determining available desktop components based upon user and workstation roles. In particular, the present invention provides a system and method for providing self-contained desktop packages based upon the user and workstation role in organization, the desktop packages including one or more desktop components.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today's modern computer software systems are often enterprise systems organized in a distributed fashion throughout the organization. The various people in the organization perform different roles using the computer system depending upon the user's job description. In a banking example, one user may be a teller and therefore need teller applications in order to serve banking customers. Another user may be a loan officer, and need to access loan officer applications to serve customers that are applying for loans. A third user may be the branch manager, and need to access computer functions used to manage the bank branch.
Traditional computer systems are typically designed to either provided all necessary functions through each computer, for example by using a computer network to access the needed functions, or the system is designed so that individual workstations perform particular roles and are therefore used by a particular user or set of users. This presents challenges in organization where multiple users use the same client computer system. In the banking example, there may be several tellers they use the same client computer system, depending on the shift, day of the week, or which teller happens to be assigned to a particular workstation.
If all organizational functions are provided from the same workstation, users that are not authorized to perform a particular function may accidentally or deliberately perform functions for which they are not authorized. For example, a teller may accidentally perform a loan officer or branch manager function if the function is available from the teller's workstation. One way traditional systems handle authorizations is by installing software components to handle each job role at each workstation, but limiting access based upon the user login. A challenge of this approach, however, is that each workstation needs to receive any new or modified software components in order to be available for any user that may need such functionality from any given workstation.
Another challenge of traditional software systems, is that components and icons relating to many different job roles may appear on the users workstation, thus causing confusion. A further challenge of traditional software systems, is a difficulty in segregating components used for various job roles from one another. This difficulty can lead to security breaches due to unauthorized personnel using components that reside on a common workstation. What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that identifies the user's job role, or roles, based upon the user's login data. What is further needed, is a system method that matches user job roles with job roles that have been assigned to various workstations located throughout the organization. Finally, what is needed is a system and method that delivers up-to-date software components for the user's job role and workstation role when the user logs into the computer system.